Where the Woods End

by Charlotte Salter

  “I’ve been looking forward to us being friends,” her mother said softly. “I knew you’d see sense one day. You’ll never leave the forest—you belong here, with me.”

  Any tenderness Kestrel felt toward her mother drained away.

  “What about our deal?” she asked. The words felt leaden in her mouth. “You said that when I find Granmos’s grabber, you’ll call the dog off for good.”

  Her mother froze.

  “Well, of course that’s still the deal,” she said. “I’ve just been thinking, sweetie, that maybe you should stop trying. To be honest, I thought you’d give up years ago.”

  Kestrel pulled sharply away from her embrace. “What do you mean, you thought I’d give up? It is out there, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, darling,” her mother said, annoyed. “Of course.”

  Doubt was worming its way through Kestrel’s bones. Something in her mother’s voice was wrong, and her eyes were too hard.

  I think she’s hiding things, her dad had said.

  Kestrel tried to breathe steadily. She was burning to get up and scream, to tear down the weave with her bare hands, but she couldn’t afford to lose her temper. The moment her mother thought Kestrel was going to disobey her, she’d be trapped. Kestrel slowly uncurled her fingers, and moved her lips into the shape of a smile.

  She had to get the bloodberries. It might be the only way to get rid of the dog, so that she could escape the forest. Whatever her mother was hiding, Kestrel suddenly doubted she ever intended to let her go.

  “I hope you haven’t forgotten your promise, either,” her mother continued softly. “No more speaking to that boy.”

  “I know,” Kestrel replied as calmly as she could. How could her mother think it was that easy to get rid of a friend?

  “Now,” said her mother, clapping her hands so suddenly Kestrel jumped, “I want you to fetch me some apples.”

  “Apples?” Kestrel repeated, bewildered. Maybe she hadn’t heard right.

  “That’s what I said, sweetie. I’m hungry.”

  Kestrel didn’t need any more persuading. The thought of walking through the forest when her grabber was following her made her skin crawl, but there was no choice. She needed to find a way to get to the Marrow Orchard and steal the bloodberries. She obediently squeezed through the tunnel in the weave, the stiff dress cutting into her stomach, then stood up by the door.

  People were murmuring outside. She pressed her ear to the wood.

  “They’re sacrificing trinkets to the wolf fire,” said her mother. “Ike thinks that if he has nothing for his grabber to take, it’ll keep away.”

  “Why does he think that?” Kestrel asked.

  “Because I told him so.” She snorted. “I wanted to see if I could get him to burn his wretched watch. I hate the way he clutches it in his grubby hands all the time.”

  Kestrel didn’t answer. Ike would do whatever her mother suggested. She actually felt sorry for him.

  “I found this in your shirt pocket,” her mother added. She opened her hand, revealing the lucky stone Finn had given her. Kestrel felt a bolt of shock, but her mother seemed to have no idea what it was. She took it gingerly and pushed it up her sleeve. “This is for you as well,” her mother said. She picked up a gray bundle of fur and pushed it into Kestrel’s arms.

  Kestrel almost choked. It was the pelt she’d pulled from the grabber’s back, made out of Mardy Banbury’s wolf-skin rug. Her mother had meticulously cleaned it; the fur was unbloodied and shining. There was a clasp on its front paws, and the head was a hood with two jaunty ears on top.

  “You deserve to keep the trophy this time,” her mother said sweetly.

  Kestrel wanted to scream with revulsion. Before she could answer, her mother reached over her shoulder and turned the door handle, shoving Kestrel outside.

  A basket landed at Kestrel’s feet, and the door slammed shut again.

  Kestrel coughed. The air was thick with smoke, and through it she could see the wolf fire burning in the middle of the village. Ike was clutching his watch in his fist, looking miserable, surrounded by a large audience.

  Kestrel picked up the basket and tried to slip past without being seen. Walt and Rascly Badger were muttering to each other, with one eye on Ike.

  “Gotta lay sticks down outside your door,” Rascly said. “The . . . you know whats can’t walk over sticks. Or fireworks. Scare ’em off with fireworks.”

  “Hold your tongue,” muttered Walt. “They’re coming faster than ever. Don’t tempt fate.”

  When Kestrel was almost past them, a piece of ash went up her nose and she spluttered.

  “Who’s there?” Mardy asked sharply. She was holding a teacup, ready to throw it into the flames. She squinted and saw Kestrel with her wolf-skin rug in her hand. Her eyes widened and she dropped the cup.

  “It was you?” she whispered.

  Hannah elbowed past Mardy to see what was happening. When she saw Kestrel her lips twitched into a nasty grin.

  “You’ve got a nerve, showing your face after what you did,” she said.

  For a moment Kestrel thought they were talking about her dad, and how she hadn’t been able to save him. Then she saw Runo, his leg in a splint, staring at her venomously.

  “His leg’s never going to be right,” Hannah said, stepping toward her. Even through the smoke, Kestrel knew that she was smirking. “Are you going to apologize?”

  Kestrel realized that the kids had crept all around her, standing in a wide circle, half hidden in the smoke. Something had changed. They felt brave enough to push her around in front of the adults.

  At that moment the air stirred and the thick smoke billowed, making a path between Kestrel and the wolf fire. Kestrel tightened her hand around the basket, ready to swing it at Hannah. But Hannah stepped back. The villagers were staring.

  Kestrel glanced down and stifled a scream. The gloom of her mother’s house and the smoke had covered it before, but now that she was standing in the firelight her dress was shining like a mirror. It was made with hundreds of real beetle wing cases, glowing oily-green in the firelight. The dress crunched as she shivered. Her skin itched as though the hundreds of beetles were crawling all over her.

  She knew at once that her mother had sent the breeze herself. She must be watching through a crack in the door right now, waiting to see what Kestrel would do next.

  For once, she did exactly what her mother wanted.

  “Heel!” she shouted confidently, and the black dog oozed out of the shadows. It trotted to her side and lay down by her feet, grinning at the villagers in a way that dogs shouldn’t be able to. Kestrel felt a shiver of power. “Don’t bite them,” she said to the dog. “Not unless they get too close.”

  The dog growled. Ike pressed his watch to his chest, his hand trembling. Kestrel threw a last glare at the assembly and walked into the forest, causing the villagers to scatter around her.

  No. She didn’t walk. She glided.

  She was a monstrous beetle with poison under her shell.

  She was a creature made of shadows, with a terrifying hound by her side.

  She was as powerful as her mother, and if anyone came near her, they’d regret it for the rest of their lives.

  “You made her angry,” she heard Walt tell Hannah behind her. “She’ll hurt you next.”

  Kestrel turned to scowl at him. He stepped back quickly, but Hannah didn’t flinch.

  “We’ll see,” Hannah said.

  * * *

  Kestrel strode into the trees until she was sure that nobody could see her. Then she put the basket down, fighting the urge to rip the dress off, and glared at the black dog.

  “You don’t need to follow me,” she said. “I’m only picking apples, aren’t I?”

  The dog raised its lip.

  “If I’m not back in fifteen min
utes, you can come get me,” she added. “Now go lick my mother’s face or something.”

  The dog sniffed and trotted off. Amazing. She’d actually commanded it.

  She looked around, aware that there were a great many shadows for a grabber to hide in. Part of her wanted to run back to the house. She squeezed the holey stone in her pocket, trying to draw some strength from it, and took a deep breath.

  Kestrel got to work. She shoved the basket under a bush, rolled her long sleeves out of the way, and pulled the plaits out of her hair to stop her head aching. She closed her eyes and tried to think of the maps in Granmos’s notebook. Where was the Marrow Orchard?

  Something nudged her leg.

  “Pip,” she said. “I know you’re there.”

  Something rustled between the layers of her horrible beetle-covered skirt. Pippit dropped out of the bottom, two shiny wings sticking guiltily from his mouth.

  “I saw you hide,” she said.

  “Food,” he said sheepishly, and sucked the wings in with a crunch.

  “Eat as many as you want,” she said, trying to wriggle her shoulders. The bodice pinched under her arms when she moved. “We’re going on a mission, and we’ve got to finish it before the dog realizes we’ve gone. And when we get there I need a distraction.”

  Pippit looked ecstatic at the thought of causing chaos.

  Kestrel bent down to tighten her shoelaces, and blinked. There was a set of footprints next to her. They were fresh. One foot was bigger than the other, and turned outward slightly. She followed the footprints with her eyes. They came from the direction of her mother’s house and went parallel with her own before disappearing into the trees just in front of her.

  Kestrel stopped breathing. The forest was silent. Slowly, she leaned over and sniffed the footprints.

  Vinegar. Just like the trail left by the woodchopper’s grabber.

  It’s here. She saw a tiny flicker of movement in the trees and looked up, dread knotting her stomach. Something huge and person-shaped detached itself from the shadows and fled into the forest.

  The grabber.

  Kestrel froze, her blood curdling. She wanted to give in to her instincts and run the other way, but then years of training kicked in, and she bolted after it. It was just ahead of her, running with barely a noise, almost invisible in the gloom. As it passed through a gap in the trees she caught sight of something brown and moldering embedded in its chest, or where its chest should be. Her grandma’s notebook. Its cover was pressed open like the wings of a huge moth, forming a solid rib cage.

  “Wait!” Kestrel screamed.

  The grabber melted into the shadows. It left a trail of cold air and the smell of rotting meat behind it.

  Kestrel stumbled to a halt, breathing hard.

  Her grabber had two feet. It was shaped like a person.

  Kestrel’s insides were doing belly flops as she scanned the trees. She wanted to know what form it was taking.

  No—she didn’t.

  But she couldn’t stop herself wondering.

  What keeps you awake at night and gives you nightmares? What makes your guts shrivel? Granmos hissed in her memory. She could see the old woman’s face as clear as day, her cruel, milky eyes threaded with angry veins as she pinned Kestrel against the wall. She could feel her silver locket pressed against her ribs, her heavy rings digging into her shoulders. Say it!

  The forest shivered. Kestrel backed away from the footprints. She suddenly felt too close to them for comfort.

  “Gruh,” Pippit warbled, pushing his nose into her ear. “Nuh, nuh.”

  “It’s not ready yet,” Kestrel said. She was trying to comfort herself as much as him. She picked him up and held on to him tightly, shivering. “We have time. We’ll get out. But we’ve got to get a head start on the dog. I think the Marrow Orchard’s . . . this way.”

  “Dark,” said Pippit, his nose quivering.

  “We don’t have time to find a lantern,” Kestrel said.

  She stopped short and blinked. It felt like cold water was running through her head, just like it had in the face painter’s clearing.

  She clapped her hands over her ears. Something went pop.

  And then she remembered.

  * * *

  Kestrel shuffled impatiently in her chair, the heavy book sliding around in her lap. She was meant to be learning to read, but she couldn’t tell the difference between b and d. Granmos was in the corner, knitting, and her mother was twirling pieces of string between her fingers, peering at the hidden pictures inside them. She’d only begun weaving recently; the walls and the ceiling were bare. The lantern on the table cast shadows of her spidery, dancing fingers on the wall.

  Kestrel allowed her eyes to wander around the room, irritated by the way her mother’s elbows clicked as she weaved. She watched a tiny spider climb up the wall opposite her, scuttling over the cracks and toward the door, silently willing it toward freedom.

  As she stared at the spider, Kestrel saw her mother’s elbow move in the corner of her eye, and she immediately knew what was going to happen.

  She leaped out of her seat without thinking, a split second before her mother knocked the lantern and gasped. Kestrel landed on the floor, her arms outstretched, and caught the lantern in her bare hands. For a moment she didn’t feel anything; then the pain ripped through her fingers. She screamed and dropped the lamp.

  The glass shattered and sprayed all over the floor. Kestrel shoved her blistered fingers into her mouth, trying not to cry. It took a lot to stop her mother weaving, but her hands were frozen, and she was staring at Kestrel.

  “Your eyesight is even better than I thought,” her mother said. She thoughtfully ran her tongue over her teeth. “There’s a lot we could do with that.”

  Despite her scorched fingers, Kestrel felt a proud grin spread over her face. Her mother smiled back, then swept the lantern glass from the floor and carried it outside. As soon as she was out the door, Kestrel’s grandma swiveled in her chair and jabbed a knitting needle at her.

  “Don’t you be clever in front of her,” she hissed. Her voice was so venomous Kestrel backed away. “Do you understand?”

  “What did I do?” Kestrel asked. She twitched as her grandma tightened her grip on the knitting needle.

  “Don’t question me,” her grandma snapped, and slammed the needle point-down into the table, where it quivered. Kestrel nodded dumbly.

  “Your eyesight is normal from now on. Get it?”

  * * *

  Kestrel shook her head. Her breath was catching in her throat, and she had to remind herself that Granmos wasn’t there anymore and couldn’t punish her. She glanced down at her hands, almost expecting to see fresh blisters, but all she saw were the same patchy scars she’d gotten from her training. Except—

  Kestrel caught her breath.

  “How could I have forgotten?” she whispered.

  The scars weren’t cuts from training—they were burn marks. She could even remember Granmos plunging her hands into a bucket of ice water to stop it hurting.

  She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear the image of her grandma’s face. Questions were fighting for attention in her head, but she couldn’t afford to waste time on them now.

  “The Marrow Orchard,” she said determinedly, trying hard to push the new memory aside.

  Kestrel looked around for the black dog, then climbed up the nearest tree as fast as she could. She’d already wasted most of her fifteen minutes, but if she stayed in the trees until she was far away from the village, she might be able to keep ahead of it for a while.

  The dress made movement difficult, but she managed to climb stiffly through the branches. She rained beetles on the ground below, and her spoon poked her in the leg like an accusation.

  Kestrel was concentrating so hard on climbing through the trees in her stiff dress th
at she didn’t hear the village kids talking until she was right above them. She cursed under her breath. They didn’t usually come this far out.

  “Her dad’s dead,” said a boy called Alec, as though he hadn’t stopped chattering about it for the last fifteen minutes. “He got gobbled up.”

  Kestrel felt like her heart had been torn open. Gobbled up? She pressed her hand over her mouth, thinking that if she didn’t, she’d scream.

  The kids were all sitting on the floor. Hannah, Runo, Briar, and most of the others. Kestrel held her breath, knowing that she couldn’t pass over their heads. One tiny noise and they’d all look up.

  “She’s got his grabber’s skin,” said Briar darkly.

  “Let’s not get carried away,” said Hannah’s voice directly below her. It was calm, but it carried a drop of poison. “We know she’s up to something, but we need evidence. The adults won’t get rid of her otherwise.”

  “We’ve got evidence, haven’t we?” said Briar sharply.

  Kestrel leaned over the branch, wondering if she should drop the cloak on them and make them scream. As she moved a beetle detached itself from her dress and spiraled down onto Hannah’s head, but Hannah didn’t notice. The boy next to her flicked it away. Something about the gesture made Kestrel pause.

  “We don’t know what she really does with the grabbers. Has anyone actually seen her kill one?” said Runo.

  “She’s probably the one who sends ’em,” said Alec, and they all gasped with a mixture of glee and disgust.

  “As it happens, there is someone who can tell us,” Hannah said. “Finn must know what happens when Kestrel goes after the grabbers. Right, Finn?”

  Kestrel’s heart almost stopped. Finn looked so different. He’d been given a brutal haircut, and there were stiff brown shoes on his feet. He sat with his legs stuck out in front of him as though he was trying to get as far away from the shoes as possible. And he’d come down to the ground to hang out with them. The ground. He had never done that for Kestrel.